"Stars brightened in a darkened sky, save where Jupiter stood at half phase low to the south, mighty in his Joseph's coat of belts and zones." (p. 199)
OK. A Biblical reference. See also The Bible On The Blog.
Other cultural references:
" A Homeric shout of laughter brought him back to what he must suppose was reality." (p. 156)
"...a sword which Lancelot might have reckoned just a trifle too heavy." (p. 157)
"The chamber was quiet except for Wagnerian music in the background..." (p. 163)
"Captive..." follows the pulp magazine convention of animal life even in an environment like Ganymede, some organisms bounding kangaroo-like in the low gravity, others crocodilean. Ganymedean biochemistry, dependent on heat-absorbing materials, is attracted by thermal radiation from landed spacecraft or spacesuits. I don't remember any of this from previous reading.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sure Anderson loved well done pulp SF and scientifantasies of the kind we see in ERB's Barsoom stories. But here we see him trying to make it plausible, given what was known about Ganymede nearly 70 years ago, to rationalize the existence of animals there.
Ad astra! Sean
Poul was a physicist.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! And he would do whatever spadework in chemistry and biology to give some plausibility to the idea of life existing on Ganymede.\\
Ad astra! Sean
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